“Jo-si-ah says Sir Harry isn’t very bad, and the constable and a magistrate have been to see him, but he says he knows nothing hardly about it. Poor Claire! What a house this is! What trouble!”
She took another stitch.
“I wonder whether Richard Linnell will come. I shall begin to hate him if he doesn’t stand by the poor girl in her distress. He’s a poor shilly-shally sort of a fellow, or he’d believe in her as I do.”
There was quite a vicious stitch here.
“Perhaps, it isn’t his fault. She kept him at a distance terribly, and no wonder with the troubles she’s had; but of course he can’t understand all that, being impetuous, like my Jo-si-ah was, and I dessay it will all come right at last. Now, what are they lumping down the stairs, making a noise, and that poor child so ill?”
She threw her work on the table, got up softly, and, just as there was a fresh bump and a whispering, she opened the door to find Isaac and Eliza standing over a box which they had just set down in the passage beside another, while Isaac in plain clothes and Eliza with her bonnet in her hand started at seeing the visitor.
“Why, highty-tighty, who’s going away?” cried Mrs Barclay wonderingly.
Eliza glanced at Isaac, who cleared his throat.
“The fact is, ma’am, this young person and I have come to the conclusion that seeing how we suffered from arrears, and what goings on there are here, Mr Denville’s isn’t the service in which we care to stop any longer.”
“Oh,” said Mrs Barclay; “and have you told Mr Denville you are going?”